Face2face: advancing the science of social interaction

Abstract

Face-to-face interaction is core to human sociality and its evolution, and provides the environment in which most of human communication occurs. Research into the full complexities that define face-to-face interaction requires a multi-disciplinary, multi-level approach, illuminating from different perspectives how we and other species interact. This special issue showcases a wide range of approaches, bringing together detailed studies of naturalistic social-interactional behaviour with larger scale analyses for generalization, and investigations of socially contextualized cognitive and neural processes that underpin the behaviour we observe. We suggest that this integrative approach will allow us to propel forwards the science of face-to-face interaction by leading us to new paradigms and novel, more ecologically grounded and comprehensive insights into how we interact with one another and with artificial agents, how differences in psychological profiles might affect interaction, and how the capacity to socially interact develops and has evolved in the human and other species. This theme issue makes a first step into this direction, with the aim to break down disciplinary boundaries and emphasizing the value of illuminating the many facets of face-to-face interaction. This article is part of a discussion meeting issue ‘Face2face: advancing the science of social interaction’.

Interactional infrastructure across modalities: A comparison of repair initiators and continuers in British Sign Language and British English

“…These routinised practices allow them to easily navigate simultaneity with minimal expressions like the ones attested in this study. Our results underscore the importance of multimodality in face-to-face conversation (Hamilton and Holler 2023) and the need for a thoroughly multimodal perspective of language (e.g., Vigliocco, Perniss, and Vinson 2014;Perniss 2018;Holler and Levinson 2019).…”

The double empathy problem: A derivation chain analysis and cautionary note.

“…We also recommend that the DEP theory is refined through synthesis with the “second-person neuroscience” literature (see also Manalili et al, 2023). This work is already provoking a serious rethink about traditional theories in social cognitive neuroscience, which have been informed by noninteractive, single-brain studies, in favor of newer models that focus on the interactive elements of social behavior (e.g., Hadley et al, 2022; A. F. D. C. Hamilton & Holler, 2023).…”

“…Second, we propose that more promising advances in measurement will come from adopting methods in the cognitive neuroscience literature. Here, research groups have already spent more than a decade theorizing about and testing various social cognitive and dynamic processes involved in two-way interaction (e.g., joint attention and action, social decision making, theory of mind, turn taking, bodily synchrony, and behavioral alignment), as well as adapting neuroscience methods to measure these processes during two-way interaction (see A. F. D. C. Hamilton & Holler, 2023;Redcay & Schilbach, 2019;Sebanz et al, 2006). One method, for example, involves "hyperscanning," which can measure "neural coupling" between two interacting brains (see A. F. D. C. Hamilton, 2021;Pérez & Davis, 2023).…”

“…To prioritize experimental control, most studies measure participants’ response to simple social stimuli (e.g., faces, anthropomorphized objects), without capturing social interactions between multiple agents. In recent years, however, there has been a promising push toward understanding the mechanisms underlying dynamic social interaction (see Cañigueral et al, 2022; Hadley et al, 2022; A. F. D. C. Hamilton & Holler, 2023; Redcay & Schilbach, 2019; Sebanz & Knoblich, 2021).…”

Human-like interactions prompt people to take a robot’s perspective

“…Here, we test whether a different factor can also induce humanisation: socially engaging behavior. Socially engaging behaviors, such as saying hello or waving to a person, are often used at the start of interaction and can set up how people engage with each other ( Eriksson, 2019 ; Holler, 2022 ; Hamilton et al, 2023 ). Here, we test if socially engaging behavior from a robot can induce humanisation of the robot and enhance people’s propensity to spontaneously take the perspective of the robot.…”